Stars on Our Hearts

3

Father leaves this morning.

My heart aches, but I force myself to sit, silent with anger, in our living room. I glance around constantly, subconsciously bouncing my leg. It's an early Thursday morning. I haven't slept.
Quiet, gentle rain pattered against the windows, as if it was trying to grab my attention. It irritated me. I feel mocked, insulted. Every raindrop was a voice, one of the voices of each and every non-Jew I passed on the streets. Every murmur, every whisper. Every assumption that I schemed for the world's demise. The rain was that boiling hatred, as if I would step outside and simply melt. In an outburst of rage, I sit up from the couch in an effort to escape the constant noise. It doesn't work.

On any other day, I would have loved this rain. On any other day, it was soothing, relaxing. It calmed me. I felt safe. It let me remember, let me relive warm memories of childhood. No war, no Nazis. I wasn't important to Germany. I wasn't of much importance even outside of the city. I wasn't a threat. I loved being just another Pole. Now, it reminded me of how easily the world could destroy my family and I. It would forever hold my father prisoner. I stared hopelessly at the window, at the rain, resentment brewing inside me and no doubt drawn all over my face.
"Edu."
I jump, and turn to see my mother standing stiffly in front of the stairs, near the door.
"Mother," I say, swallowing. "I, um- I hadn't heard you come down." She shrugs, but I can see her shaking. She pulls her gaze away from my eyes, instead admiring an old photograph of her, Father, and I taken just before the invasion. Mother parts her lips, and I can barely see the storm of swirling emotion in her eyes, before its cut off and she looks back at me, her eyes now a stoney brown.

"Were you watching the rain, dear?"
I blink, scrambling for a response. Whatever she wanted to ask or say to me was now gone, and I doubted I'd hear it soon. I shrugged.
"Kinda of. Not really, I just..." I couldn't lie, but I couldn't fully tell the truth either. I didn't know what the truth was myself. I decided on a half-truth, of sorts.
"I couldn't get any rest, that's all."
Disappointment flashed in her eyes, and I desperately hold out my arms.
"It's fine with me, though, if you wanted to stay. I actually needed someone to sit with me, truthfully."
My mother's eyes are red with tears. She makes her way to the living room couch. Wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand, she goes quiet. She watches the rain. It's painful for me, but she needs this. I know she desperately needs this. Needs me. And I was right, too. I needed someone to comfort me, or I might have snapped and done something I shouldn't have.

The sound of my fathers footsteps echoing down the stairs interrupts the noise. My mother lets out a soft whimper, like a sob, and I squeeze my eyes shut, clenching my fists. Uncontrolled tears slip out of my eyes, and I fight to keep my composure. No one returns from the German camps. If, by some one-in-a-lifetime miracle, there was someone who had returned home safely from those camps, had come back to their family, I hadn't heard of it. My father was going to arrive at the station, where he would then be sent to his grave. He was a walking corpse that we could only hug one last time.

Father drew in a shaky breath, uncomfortably fumbling with the small briefcase in his hand, the only luggage he is allowed. Angrily I wipe the tears from my face, poking my eye. Mother rises to stand, rubbing away her own tears, before smiling halfheartedly.
"You look... very handsome, Arthur." She chokes on her last words, and forces herself to rush over and hug him. My father gazes at me longingly.
"My train leaves soon. If I don't make it, they'll punish all of us." He murmurs. "They'll arrest you both." Ma sobs in his arms, the hair falling out of her butterfly pin and into her face, ugly and devastated. I understand what he means, but I can't bring myself to move on my own.
An outside force draws me in, and I don't fight it. A puppet, I realize. A puppet, all tangled in their strings. Struggle, and the Nazis cut your wires, just like that. No remorse; they actually take joy and pride in it. Then, you never move again. With no one left to grieve for you.
"Edu, look after your mother, alright? You're not a boy anymore- you're a man, a man of freshly seventeen. You handle this, can't you?" His grip on my shoulders tighten, and he shakes me a bit. The fear in his eyes is staggering."Can you do that for me? Can you protect your mother for me?" Pa asks.
"Of course," I promise, the whisper releasing from my body. I can sense the feeling of despair from my mother beside me. "Of course I will."
Pa's muscles loosen in relief. He kisses my mother, before setting his cap on his head. He rests his hand on my shoulder one last time, kisses my forehead, and I feel the tears once again. Like a child.
"I love you both." He says firmly. Picking up what little luggage he's allowed, he opens the door, gazes around our small home one last time, then smiles sadly at my mother and I. He tries to appear brave, unbothered by the circumstances. But he's afraid. I can see it in his eyes now, he's been afraid for a long time.

Once he steps out the door though, the panic inside me immediately takes hold.
He shuts the door behind him, and Pa is gone.